As the polls closed in Brazil on Sunday, thousands of Workers’ Party supporters flocked to São Paulo’s iconic Paulista Avenue. They were hoping to celebrate an outright victory by the party’s boss, former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, whose polls suggested was on the verge of clinching the election with an absolute majority. But that landslide never was. In fact, Brazil ended up having the tightest first-round vote in its democratic history.
In many ways, what happened on Sunday epitomizes the Workers’ Party’s hubris.
For nearly four years, the most prominent left-of-center political force in Brazil — and the only…